Improving response to economic crime

Wednesday, 12 September, 2018

Last month the Home Office announced the award of over £100 million for police transformation projects.

The City of London Police, the national lead force for force, has secured £6.1 million on behalf of policing and the National Crime Agency to fund several projects that will help to improve the current policing response to economic crime. A national taskforce for more integrated regional working on fraud and a direct-entrant recruitment campaign for fraud detectives will help to increase capacity in the system. The project will also put emphasis on building capabilities through training and accreditation for specialist fraud detectives across England and Wales, making use of the City of London Police's already established Economic Crime Academy.

A second project will improve the way that police forces receive information from Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. The project will integrate the Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau's analytics platform with force record management systems reducing the need to re-key data. This initiative will ensure greater cohesion between the national reporting service for fraud and cyber crime, speeding up the process of sharing data and allowing outcomes to be automatically captured. It will also offer forces an enhanced capacity to provide improved services to victims, by linking all crime to a victim not just those which are typically recorded at a local level. Multi-year funding has been awarded in support of this project, in recognition of the scale of the task. City of London Police's National Co-Ordinator for Economic Crime, Commander Karen Baxter said: "We are very pleased to have received this funding from the Home Office. The money will allow us to fulfil an aspiration that the City of London Police has had for a long time, to upskill police officers in economic crime and build fraud capabilities across the country.

"The results of this project allow us to transform police forces' approach to fraud and help to tackle this type of crime."

Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Nick Hurd said: "Criminals don't stand still, and neither should our police forces. We're determined to support police leaders in creating a modern, agile and responsive police service.

"The Police Transformation Fund is delivering real change in policing, and this new funding will continue to help forces improve efficiency and tackle threats like serious, organised and economic crime."